Pottery Mark Query- Choify Le Roy HB et Co Paris Crown, Shield, Fleurs de lis

by JoAnn
(Tulsa, OK USA)

I have researched this mark in the past and am hoping to find more information about it. I’m very happy to have found this site to see if anyone else knows anything or has seen.

My great aunt was a big antique collector who died in the 1960’s. This is one of many pieces that my parents got from her and put in a drawer for the last 45 years.

This plate measures almost 11.5”. I am not familiar enough to say if it was painted, transferred or something else. There are tiny ring holes all the way around the rim in 2 sizes just underneath the edge. You can feel them.

I hope to have uploaded a photo so you will see they are rings, or something that looks like a pin may have been stuck there at one time. I remember reading somewhere about a technique that used metal strips and pins put in place to add the colors. I don’t really know.

All research leads to Choisy le Roi not Choify le Roy, until I found a journal from the 1700’s and all the way through it, where we use an s it would have an f.
i.e. “ it would feem to the obferfer that thefe were the fame” (it would seem to the observer that these were the same) This gave me great confidence that the Choisy location is the same, but through history the letters f & s, evolved into their current usage.

In the March 2006 publication “Majolica Matters”, I found a mark as close as I have ever found to the one on my piece. It is a very interesting story about how Hippolyte Hautin joined the Paillard brothers in 1820, then brought in his son-in-law Louis Boulenger to become Hautin & Boulenger. Later the company was run by the grandson, Hipployte Boulenger. So there are a couple of ways to end up with H&B and I’m sure many others, since this doesn’t account for the use of the old fashioned Choify spelling.

The Paillard brothers created the Choisy-le-Roi Manufactory in 1804. Following should be 2 of the marks used by them - which I found in the article. It is unknown how many marks were used by them and nothing is known about who made pottery before 1804 .

It doesn’t help at all that I do not know French. I believe the info going around the shield with the fleurs–de-lis is an address. I also understand that Choisy is like an area, if you will, of Paris.

The blue and purple detail on the woman is somehow different. I wish I knew how to explain. Some of it can be felt, but the color is almost reflective.

I would be very happy to know how to explain this piece of pottery – if it were hand painted, if it is called faience or anything that would help me communicate. I have not found anything on Gerard, the first letter may be wrong…I am not sure.

It is my belief above gERARD and below the bench where the squiggles are looks like a signature or mark.

JoAnn